A C-arm x-ray angiography system is in particular provided as an x-ray imaging system, in particular for the method mentioned in the introduction. The publication DE 10 2005 016 472 published after the application date of the present application discloses in particular a method, wherein a plurality of image acquisition operations is performed with the aid of a C-arm x-ray angiography system. While only one individual image acquisition operation of this type is normally implemented with x-ray angiography, the method described in the said application is characterized in that an electrocardiogram (ECG) of the patient is recorded. A phase of the ECG can herewith be assigned to each x-ray image. Only the x-ray images of a certain heart phase are then selected for the 3D x-ray image data record to be reconstructed, so that the overall image is not “blurred” by the movement of the heart. If necessary, several 3D x-ray image data records can be generated for each specific heart phase. The said method is thus tailored to mapping the heart.
The different image acquisition operations were hitherto run immediately one after the other. A C-arm movement over approximately 200° in approximately 5 seconds is thus carried out with each acquisition operation. Three to four C-arm acquisition operations are necessary. The overall duration of the image recording then typically amounts to 25 seconds. Since not only the movement of the heart can produce image unsharpness, but also the breathing of the patient, the patients are requested to hold their breath during the entire image recording procedure. The entire duration of 25 seconds for this is relatively long and therefore may cause problems in the case of children and patients with breathing problems.